Leverage Browser Caching- What is it?

Today we'll be talking about something that will actually be beneficial in increasing website load time and speeds. Let's talk about what happens when you view a website in your browser first. When your web browser displays a webpage, it has to do the task of loading all your page elements such as Logo, the CSS file and other elements. Browser caching does a wonderful job by "remembering" the elements your browser had already encountered and loaded when you had previously visited a particular site. Suppose you go to another page on the same website, then what happens is that the browser records and remembers the previously loaded elements and doesn't need them to load them again. It just has to access the cached version of the page you had visited. People have asked how to make website load faster all the time.What we get out of this in the end is faster website load times.

Most often you need to check the website load time of your own website, and you happen to find out that you are required to do the task of leverage browser caching. You may ask how could that be done. Well read on to find out.

How do you enable browser caching?

 It's not at all complicated. It's pretty simple. The most sought after way of achieving this is to add a piece of code to a file named .htaccess on your hosting website. All you have to do is go into the file manager on your webhosting service provider's cPANEL and make changes to the file.

This particular file .htaccess has a lot of influence on many important things on your website.
So, you must be careful what you edit there. If you're unfamiliar with how it all goes, do some research on the .htaccess file or read about it on your service provider's support page.
Anyway, down below is the code that is to be added to the .htaccess file. Notice that this code tells the browsers how long it is that they should store the cached webpages. This code must be placed at the top of your .htaccess file.

 ## EXPIRES CACHING ##
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
ExpiresActive On
ExpiresByType image/jpg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/gif "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType image/png "access 1 year"
ExpiresByType text/css "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/html "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/pdf "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType text/x-javascript "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType application/x-shockwave-flash "access 1 month"
ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access 1 year"
ExpiresDefault "access 1 month"
</IfModule>
## EXPIRES CACHING ##

Now after you have added this piece of code, please save your file and refresh your page.

How to set custom times for different file formats?

As seen in the given code above, time periods like 1 month and 1  year are given. These are associated separately with different file formats like .jpg in the above example which states that it should be remembered for one year.

This can be changed to suit your needs. You can define any time limit for any file format by editing the code given above.

Issues faced by caching  

If suppose you have listed your code, images and other elements to be remembered for a long time, say, one year, the issue you face afterwards is that when you make changes or update the html, css or any other elements, those won't be visible to the persons who have cached your webpages. Only old versions of that page would be visible rather than the current ones.

 

Recommended by Google

Google recommends the usage of Expires(discussed here). It goes on to recommend that it's imperative that you specify one of the expires or Cache-control Max-age. Only one way is recommended by Google and that we have already discussed here.

Well, that's all folks. Hope you learnt something new and exciting today about leverage browser caching in web hosting.

Have a nice day!

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5 ways to build backlinks to your website

Hey guys, it's been quite sometime since i posted the last time. This article today we'll be discussing about is Link-building. Link building is a very very crucial part of SEO. So those who don't know what this term means, these are links from various other sites that are basically pointing towards your domain and telling Google and other search engines that yours is a very resourceful website and has very reliable content. So the more the backlinks, the better. The search engines take this as a way of determining how valuable your website is and whether it should be indexed regularly and given high search engine rankings. So yeah, Backlinks are pretty much a big deal.
Backlinks to your site coming from high PR sites indicate the search engines that you're in a good "neighborhood". Backlinks constitute pretty much everything in Offsite SEO. We'll  be discussing various ways of link building.

Related: 10 ways to drive traffic to your website using Google+

Create a website for the masses

It's a pretty well established fact that search engines follow what people tend to follow. If they happen to like your content they'll keep coming back for more and that's natural. There is no other true way of building links to your site than getting the people to talk about it. If you build a great resource, that's reliable and useful people will want to make use of content and also keep in touch.

You'll see a lot of popular forums, like microsoft forums and also considering Yahoo answers ranking very high in the search engines. That's all because people rely on these sites to get their problems solved. Petople themselves will link to your site and that will build enough backlinks for you to come up in the search engines.

Be of Use

Serve some purpose on the internet. Build your spot. Just like social networking sites serve the purpose of getting people to stay connected, forums tend to put an end to their problems, your website too must have a specific purpose and people should see that. People should make use of your site and should be able to help them in some or the other way. People should see why they need to use your site.

Check what your competitors are doing

By competitors, i mean people in your niche striving to rank for the same set of keywords online. They basically are people that are producing the same type of content you're producing to woo your audience. It's highly imperative that you keep tracking what your competitors ar doing. You don't wanna be left behind like a lost puppy trying to figure out where he got cut off.
Find out where their links are coming from. There are a lot of tools out there which tell you where your competitor is getting his links from. If you happen to stumble upon these freely available sources that you could get links from, then i don't see any reason why you shouldn't exploit them to your cause.

Blog Commenting

Today, Most of the blog comments are "nofollow"(Search engines won't follow and index your site and won't give any weightage). But there are dofollow blogs in existence that you can make use of and can get link weight.
I comment on various blogs to get link juice to your site. For instance if i approach a well established blogger and ask him to link to my site, it wouldn't happen for sure. But if i become an active member on their blogs, they might link to your site. These links also drive traffic to your site.

Guest Blogging

Now when i talk about guest blogging, i mean writing as a guest author for another site, mostly a reputed blog. This is the way most of the bloggers today are adopting to get links towards their sites. So why shouldn't you? It's pretty simple. All you have to do is come up with great unique content that people most likely will read with interest and submit it to a high ranking blog of your niche. Plus include a link pointing to your site. Voila, you have a backlink from a high PR site. You'll probably get paid for what you wrote in addition to that link you get to your site. Now, isn't that hell of an easy task?

Recommended: How to get your website noticed in Google.

Conclusion

So these are some evergreen sure shot ways to build and get free backlinks to your website. People also buy backlinks to save them time but Google especially doesn't really appreciate that and may penalize you for indulging in such practices. Be sure to use a Backlink checker to check links to your site. Thank you for reading. Happy Blogging!

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5 Tips for SEO survival in 2014

In 2013, Google's updates to it's algorithms namely PANDA, PENGUIN and HUMMINGBIRD had enforced a wide variety of changes in the world of SEO. A lot of websites were affected due to these updates and continue to do so this year. There search engine rankings were affected because a major change had been made in how they were ranked.
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Fortunately, we have a lot of strategies online that may help what was lost. Search engine rankings can be once again returned to their past glory. It is highly important that you stay updated with the latest trends and the latest in the tools plus techniques used in achieving better rankings in search engines. Or you may risk yourself in getting left behind.

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How to set Alt and Title tags for images in Blogger

Alt and Title tags

Hey buds! If you happen to own a photography blog or just any other blog that would have a lot of pictures in it, then it's highly imperative that you optimize pictures and photographs in your blog posts for the search engines. Popular search engines such as Google itself, Yahoo, and Microsoft's Bing highly favor search engine optimized images.This article shows you how to set Alt and Title tags for images in Blogger. By optimizing the images in your blog posts you have a chance of increasing traffic towards your blog.

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Change old Permalink for better SEO in Blogger

Now at this time i want to teach you a trick that might help you with your search engine rankings. It's a pretty simple trick. First let's talk about the common errors we tend to do while deciding the permalink of your blog post. Yes we will we talking about setting optimized permalinks that will contribute towards better SEO and search engine rankings.
This post article deals with how to change  the old permalink to the new custom made permalink to get better search engine rankings by better search engine optimization. Keep reading to find out more about this.
The permalink is primarily set by default to http://exampleblogname.blogspot.com/yyyy/mm/blog_post_example.html‘.

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How to speed up your website load time

Site load time infographics

Well, Welcome back folks!
Have you ever come across a website that loads very slowly? So slowly, that it eventually gets on your nerves and almost immediately you decide to leave it? Well, if that is the case, you probably would be wondering what would happen to YOUR site traffic if your website gave the same slowpoke treatment to your website's visitors. It'd look pretty ugly if you were on the wrong side here. So dont worry, because this post will tell you about ways that you can learn and implement which in turn will help you reduce your site load times. This post will teach you how to speed up your website load times. Let's first discuss why does it matter really?

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10 ways to drive traffic to your website using Google+

Google plus as we already know doesn't have that kind of magic that Facebook, twitter and youtube possess but for bloggers it still can act as a boost to their search engine ventures. As it is owned by Google inc., bloggers everywhere can truly enjoy its search engine benefits. Google favors the people who use Google plus.

Google plus, despite its unpopularity continues to grow as it is the property of Google inc. which makes sure that it's users use its services even if it were to enforce its services upon them such as in the case of its messaging application Hangouts. So with Google plus under Google's wing, it pretty much continues to gather and grow users whether they like it or not.
Listed down below are ten benefits users can share:

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How to get your website noticed in Google?

So what does it take to get your site noticed by google? For you to run a successful online blog, your website should be visible to most search engines like google, yahoo, bing to name a few.
But here we will be discussing just how it is done in the case of the most popular search engine there is, i.e., GOOGLE. Fasten your seat belts now, as i give you an explanation about how it's done.

Well, some of the steps required include setting up a Webmaster Tools account, submitting your website's sitemap, and making sure your site will be noticed.

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